


Love, Natasha

by Ahez



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Iffy Medical Procedures (mostly implied), Kid Fic, Not-Great Treatment of a Child, Red Room (Marvel), Red Room Related Nastiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-02-01 17:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12710004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahez/pseuds/Ahez
Summary: "Are you awake?" she asks. Nothing. To fill the silence, she keeps talking. "Your name is James Barnes. I read about you in US History last year. You worked with Captain America during World War II. Mama thinks I don't know who you are -- that you don't know who I am either -- but she's wrong. Even if I hadn't put together you and the pictures I've seen, she named me after you."





	1. Chapter 1

Lyuba is no idiot.

When Mama comes to get her from Yelena’s care, she is ready; ready from afternoon hours of sparring before tea and weekend identity swaps. She can hide from Yelena in the city on her own, given twenty dollars and enough time. When Mama steps into the mall ― not the one nearest, of course, but neither the one farthest ― Lyuba goes straight for the hair dye and the fake glasses. Mama follows her, selecting two boxes of blonde dye, and a pair of roundish glasses for herself. They buy their stuff with cash and leave the store for one of the mall bathrooms, where Mama cuts Lyuba’s hair over the toilet and rinses out the hair dye with the contents of a few water bottles. Lyuba returns the favor with hands as steady as she can manage, giving Mama a fringe over her forehead and working the dye into her hair before rinsing it out.

Within the hour, they’re at the airport with fake passports and tickets to Berlin. Lyuba’s German is limited to Guten Morgen and Dankeschön, so when the flight lands some thirteen hours later, she pretends to busy herself with Mama’s phone, playing the role of a stereotypical teenager. She feigns boredom and impatience going through customs, and then draws Mama’s phone back up to hide her face. Mama has a number of games on her phone, but Lyuba doesn’t have the attention to devote to playing them, so she opens YouTube and scrolls through the trending videos absentmindedly. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Mama hotwire a car that looks like it’s been sitting in the street for a few decades. Buckled safely into the passenger seat, she and Mama start toward the edges of the city and beyond.

“Listen, Lyuba,” Mama says. “We’re looking for your Papa. I have to go soon, but Yelena won’t be able to keep you safe anymore. Take care of him, alright?”

Lyuba nods. She is not sure about taking care of him. If he’ll be better able to keep her safe than Yelena is, surely he can care for himself.

Lyuba says nothing.

Mama drives them to the crest of a hill, turning off the engine and stepping out. Lyuba follows suit, and looks out at a building hiding in the valley beyond. It is a massive, ugly hunk of concrete and metal, with a few dirty windows dotting each wall.

“Bulletproof glass is still a weak point,” Mama says. It’s because it creates a seam, and seams are always easier to break than the whole, unbroken piece, Lyuba knows. “That’s how he got in.” She points to the left, and down low near the ground is a window frame, its pane smashed in and some of the shards littering the dirt underneath. Lyuba watches as the tiny figure of a person slips through the empty space and begins a march toward them.

The figure is a man, dressed in tattered black gear, with longish hair and a sickly pale pallor. He hasn’t gotten enough food or sleep, Lyuba thinks, and that’s probably not nearly the full extent of his problems.

She recognises him, which is the beginning of the questions building up behind her brain-to-mouth filter.

“James,” Mama says evenly.

“Natalia,” he says back. They don’t seem to know what to say to each other. The three of them stand in a triangle, staring at each other as if they are caught in a verbal deadlock.

“Lyuba,” Mama says finally. “This is James Barnes. James, this is Lyuba ― our daughter.”

James’s eyes flick to Lyuba’s face. They widen a half a fraction, and Lyuba would barely notice except that she’d specifically been watching his expression. Quicker than the shock had come, his expression returns to stony indifference. “Good morning, Lyuba,” he says.

“Good morning,” she says back. She isn’t really aware of the time, except that it’s dark out.  
Mama pulls James aside and converses quietly with him just too far away for Lyuba to hear. Then she nods and walks away toward the building in the valley, leaving Lyuba with James.

James slips into the driver’s seat of the car Lyuba and Mama had taken here, and Lyuba tentatively sits in the passenger seat. They go back the way they came, down a dirt road tread by passing cars rather than by any municipal force. They do not go toward Berlin. They take the A 10 to the A 11 and drive toward Poland, stopping briefly in Szczecin. From there, it’s on to Warsaw, then Lublin, then Lviv, where they stop for the night. Lyuba’s legs and back hurt from sitting for so long ― they’ve been on the road for around twelve hours, and before that, she’d spent thirteen on an airplane. She nearly misses the bed in the motel room when she goes to collapse on it.

“How long since you last slept?” James asks. Lyuba turns her head to face him, and takes a few moments to process the question.

“Um,” she starts. There’s a long pause where she can’t remember what her reply was. “A day-ish.”

“Your mental impairment is approximately the same as someone with a zero point one blood alcohol content,” James says.

“OK,” Lyuba says. She begins to doze off but can’t quite fall asleep. Instead, she gets stuck in a hazy limbo between awake and sleeping. Around four in the morning she forces herself awake and looks around the room. James is sitting at the table in the corner, staring at nothing. She gets up off the bed and sits, cross-legged, on the floor across from him. He doesn’t react.

“Are you awake?” she asks. Still nothing. To fill the empty silence, she keeps talking. “Your name is James Barnes. I read about you in US History last year. You worked with Captain America during World War II.” She gives him a wry grin, even if he isn’t seeing it. “Mama thinks I don’t know who you are ― that you don’t know who I am either ― but she’s wrong. Even if I hadn’t put together you and the pictures I’ve seen, she named me after you.” Lyuba pauses.

Tracing the letters on the carpet, she says, “Lyubov Natalia James. Love, Natalia, James.” Caught in a cycle, the way she absolutely hates but can never stop herself from, she repeats it to herself, index finger tracing characters on the ground. LYUBOV NATALIA JAMES LYUBOV NATALIA JAMES LYUBOV NATALIA JAMES.

And then there’s a hand on hers, and James has leaned forward to stop her. “I remember you,” he says.

“Yeah,” Lyuba whispers. “I remember you, too.”

 

Bucharest is more like the other cities Lyuba is familiar with than any of the ones they saw in Poland or Germany or Ukraine. The pattern of the language around her is more familiar. James says that it’s because it’s a Romance language, like French and Spanish, both of which Lyuba has heard before. She has friends whose parents don’t speak English, has heard both languages enough that she’s almost conversational.

James, of course, has mastered all of them.

“You’ve had like a bazillion years to learn them,” Lyuba tells him, only slightly bitter. He laughs.

Their new IDs say that they are David and Elena Radu. They find an apartment in a decently nice building that they can afford on the job that James finds their second day in Romania. They move in after two weeks living in a stolen car, which James then gets rid of. It’ll make it harder to leave if they need to, but will also make it harder to track them. It’s a give and take, but weighing the options, Lyuba thinks James made the right choice.

They have no connection to Romania; no history here. James is from Brooklyn and Lyuba grew up in Los Angeles. Lyuba is, presumably, Russian-American and James’s parents were from somewhere in the UK (James can’t remember where, exactly). Romania draws them in because there’s nothing about it that should attract them.

A month in, James enrolls her in the school nearest to their apartment. She’s placed in the second to last year of ciclul gimnazial which is confusing compared to the US school system until she actually starts going and forgets about it all. She makes one friend by the end of her first month.

Gabriela Moraru is a diminutive girl about a year older than Lyuba. They have known each other for three weeks when Lyuba decides to invite Gabriela to visit the apartment.  
James says they need to work on homework.

“Papa,” Lyuba groans. Gabriela laughs and says to James that, yes Mr Radu, we will.

Even after Gabriela leaves, Lyuba keeps calling him Papa. He seems... pleased. Lyuba knows that he is her father, knows that they’re on good terms, but it has only just started to feel right.

(Hypocrite, one half of her mind says. You’ve less memory of time with your mother than you do with him, and you’ve yet to acknowledge him as your parent.

The other half thinks _hypocrite_ is the wrong word.)

The next weekend, Lyuba goes to the store and buys a disposable camera. She takes pictures of herself and Papa outside the Carrefour and standing in the kitchen. Mundane things, but special to her. She gets them developed when the camera runs out of film, and gives a few of them to Papa in a blank notebook for David Radu’s birthday (Papa’s actual birthdate is the subject of much debate in the history-nerd community, and he doesn’t remember it himself). She means it as the beginnings of a photo album, but he writes in it, short little notes to himself intermingled with page after page of whatever it is he writes about. By the time school lets out in June, the pages are almost all filled, photos tucked between as bookmarks.

Lyuba presents him with another notebook and a few more pictures. “What do you write about?” she asks.

“Things I remember,” he says, “so that I won’t forget.”

She sneaks out of the house that night, although she’s sure that he knows, and goes to the library and googles ways to help improve memory. She prints out articles and folds them into her jacket pocket, and then turns to a different train of thought and looks up Bucky Barnes. She prints out pictures of Papa marching alongside Steve Rogers and of Captain America saluting like an overzealous patriot trying to look at the sky and shielding his eyes from the sun. Lyuba doesn’t know how to properly salute, but she’s not one hundred percent sure that Captain America does either. She holds the photos carefully until she gets home so that they stay flat, and leaves them on the kitchen counter for Papa before showering and going to bed.

She dreams a memory, perhaps because she’s been thinking about Papa and remembering.

She’s outside of school, and can’t be older than eight. Her teacher is trying to keep track of the kids whose parents have come to pick them up and who shouldn’t leave yet. He is standing across the street, and Lyuba thinks he looks familiar.

“I’m Lyuba’s father,” he says, approaching the teacher, and it’s not impossible. Lyuba’s inherited his looks, although she doesn’t know it then. He exchanges pleasantries with the teacher and then takes Lyuba’s hand and walks with her down the street. They get into Yelena’s car, and Yelena cries when she sees Lyuba. Lyuba, too young for her first thought to be _she thought I was dead_ , curls up into Yelena’s side and begins telling her about the day.

They go home, to the house in a quiet neighborhood in Westchester where Yelena has been hiding since before Lyuba was even born. He takes Yelena downstairs into the basement and comes back up alone after a few minutes to prepare for Lyuba a snack and to help her find cartoons to watch on TV. Then he disappears back into the basement and leaves Lyuba by herself for an hour or so.

The dream takes a turn away from memory. Lyuba did not see what happened in the basement, but her mind supplies it based on what Yelena explained afterward. She knows that Papa interrogated Yelena. She knows that he ran off halfway through after being sick across Yelena’s floor. She knows that he did not forget her face. She wakes up with the imagined image of him staring down a gun at Yelena imprinted behind her eyes. She stares up at the ceiling and listens to the whistle of her own breath and wonders what happened.

They’d moved to south toward Torrance and ended up in a smaller house under a different name. A week after moving, Yelena had started the training. Now here Lyuba was, living in a new country with a new name and a new parental figure.

Thank you, Yelena.

“Papa,” Lyuba whispers. “Do you remember, five years ago, when you picked me up from school?”

“Yes,” he whispers back.

“I’m sorry you had to leave,” Lyuba says.

Papa doesn’t say anything, and Lyuba dozes back off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Natalia runs.

Two buildings back, the blond American follows, carrying with him a bow and quiver as though they’re in ancient times, before the guns that Natalia had built her career on. She has tried her damnedest to lose him, but he follows her through all her twists and turns. She is confident that she can still outrun him, so she heads for the dilapidated apartment just shy of the heart of Budapest where she’s been hiding for the last month or so.

Her clothing and other trinkets are packed into a duffle bag, but nothing is too important to part with. Her armory is the only thing that didn’t come into her possession second- or third-hand. The only thing she could never leave behind lies in a makeshift bassinet, wailing. Natalia picks the baby up, holding her close as she opens the window and drops onto the fire escape. She has made it down three stories when the American steps into her path.

“So you’ve gone from murder to kidnapping,” he says.

“She’s mine,” Natalia says. Her accent is vaguely cosmopolitan, but mostly American. She’s not sure why she chose it. It’s an odd accent, since it’s not associated with any country in particular.

It lends mystery, she supposes.

“Yours.” The American is disbelieving. “And who else’s? A mark’s?”

“A... colleague,” Natalia says. He was not just a colleague, but it will provide some illusion to Natalia that she is protecting him. She hopes with all her heart that the American does not pry any further.

“Okay,” he says. “Come with me, and once we’ve proved it, she might be able to stay with you.”

Natalia tries her best to keep her voice even. “No.”

“You don't have that many other options, Widow.”

Natalia draws herself up, tries to make herself look more in control than she feels like she is. “I will go with you if you swear on your life you won't breathe a word about her.”

The American considers this for a moment. “Compromise,” he proposes. “You come with me to my handler. We prove the kid is yours. You get one week, and then you report to the SHIELD HQ in DC for your new job.”

Natalia raises a brow. “As a prisoner.”

“As an intelligence asset in training to become a field agent.”

A pause.

“Okay,” Natalia says.

“Okay?” the American asks. He’s surprised that she acquiesced so easily, Natalia knows. She would be, too.

“Yes,” she says, laces her words with dry humor at his expense. He makes a face at her, which turns quickly to surprise as the building and fire escape rattle around them.

Their eyes go toward the sky. A hole opens up in the heavens, and through it tumbles a mass of metal that twists through the air on its way down. “Holy fuck,” the American says. Natalia agrees, although she doesn’t say so.

The American snags the hem of Natalia’s coat, pulls her along as he scrambles down the rest of the fire escape. Smoke roils through the streets, the thing as its source, and Natalia tries to protect her baby’s lungs. It’s futile, and a full range of motion is necessary to be best prepared for anything, so she uses a scarf to form a makeshift sling and carries her daughter that way, following the American as he makes his way through streets of frightened civilians.

He takes them to a mediocre hotel unfortunately close to the site of the thing’s landing. He has the key for room six on the fourth floor, and Natalia follows him into a temporary base of operations occupied by a dark haired man in a suit.

“Barton,” the man says, hovering by the window, peering out at the thing in the street. “What’s the status with the Widow?”

“Uh,” Barton says, “there was a complication.” Natalia stands stock still in the doorway as the suited man turns.

“Ah,” he says woefully. Then, to Barton, “Your soft heart, as always.”

“She has a kid,” Barton says, and Natalia shoots him a look. Barton turns to her. “Coulson’s my handler.” Back to Coulson: “We’ve got a deal.”

Coulson raises a brow. “And what, pray tell, is this deal?”

“We prove the kid is hers. She gets one week to get the kid set up off the record, then she reports back to SHIELD.”

“As a prisoner,” Coulson confirms.

“As an intelligence asset in training to become a field agent,” Barton says, exasperated.

“Uh-huh,” Coulson says. “If ― and that’s a big if ― I can swing that, how do we know she’s not going to run?”

Natalia pipes up. “If I'm not there in a week, Barton kills me.”

“Miss Romanova,” Coulson says, “if you were to be given a week to hide yourself from us, do you really think Barton could find you again?”

“I’m not that good,” Natalia says. Coulson appears amused.

“ _Barton’s_ not that good.”

“Hey!” Barton says. “I found her the first time, didn’t I?”

“Yes, when she was unaware of your being in pursuit, and occupied by the infant she had recently... _acquired_.”

Barton shrugs and changes to subject: “So are we going to prove the kid’s hers or not?”

“Yes,” Coulson says, “as soon as you figure out how to do it, of course, since you want this off the radar.” Barton had obviously not thought his plan out very much, and while Coulson seemed not to be put off by this, clearly there were flaws.

Coulson and Barton go on a search for a lab that might be able to do something like that, and finally decide that they’re going to have to use a mostly-abandoned SHIELD lab in the next city over. Natalia and her daughter are left in the hotel room, locked in (supposedly, but Natalia knew she could easily escape through the window or even just leave through the door if she wanted to). Barton and Coulson take with them cheek swabs from both Natalia and her daughter, and leave a rough estimate that they’ll return within a day and a half.

That’s all well and good. There’s food in the room, and with access to a bathroom and water, Natalia has everything she needs. She takes a fast shower, and gently bathes her baby in the sink. She eats what passes for a full meal, and feeds her daughter. About ten hours in, trouble bursts through the window in the form of a metal, robotic being, almost human-shaped, and begins crawling its way through the room.

Natalia improvises. Her armory is still in that apartment, and Coulson and Barton hadn’t left anything weapon-like behind, but Natalia is good at hand-to-hand, too, and this being is probably not much different than a regular opponent. After all, biology works best when it follows its own templates.

Assuming it’s at all biological, of course.

Most things won’t function without their brains, and Natalia takes a guess that the “brain” will be in its head, which she wrenches off its body with a display of more strength than a normal woman of her stature would possess. Then she takes her daughter up into her arms, looking desperately for somewhere defensible before settling on a closet opposite the kitchenette. The baby stashed away, safe as she can make her, Natalia turns on the ball of her foot to face the shattered window.

It takes only a few minutes for the next one to pull itself into the room. Natalia isn’t quite quick enough at decapitating it, and it digs a cut into her arm and down her side before she does. The gash stings, but as always, Natalia powers through. She’s had worse. She can deal.

Natalia would like to say that she loses track of how many opponents she defeated, but there are only four more after the first two before they stop heading her way. She knows, and is grateful, that she isn’t their target. Through the window, she watches them swarm up the sides of other buildings, converging at the highest points of the city. This is her chance to get out. She picks up a pen and scrawls across the wall in somewhat unfamiliar Latin characters. _There’s probably a power source in the main vessel. I’ll see you in New York in one week._ She finds a credit card, no doubt in SHIELD’s name, and tucks it into her pocket.

She digs shrapnel away from the closet door ― bits of the wall that had come down as those beings had smashed their way up the side of the hotel ― and picks up her daughter from where she is wailing in a nest of blankets on the floor. This war against the fantastical is not her problem. Her daughter is her priority. Even with the maternal instinct trained and beaten and washed out of her, there’s a feeling of responsibility in her chest, tying her to the little girl ― a weakness on a good day, her logical mind says. On a bad day... it’s best Natalia not think about that.

She walks for some four hours, heading northwest from the hotel until she reaches Solymár, whereupon she buys a ticket for the first train out. The attendant who sells her the ticket is confused because she doesn’t have a destination, but hands her a ticket to Esztergom anyway and bids her a good day.

The train ride to Esztergom is only two hours long, but her baby refuses to stop crying, drawing more attention than Natalia wants. She stands and paces along the aisle of the car, hoping the swaying will soothe the little girl. It does, but too late, and Natalia is more than eager to leave the train and lose the people who have been watching her for the last couple of hours.

With the help of a local woman, Natalia finds her way to the nearest car depot. Settling her baby against her hip, she marches up to the desk and asks for the cheapest car they have, dropping the credit card on the table and then, when the lady has finished the sale, leaves the card there and goes to her new car. She has no child seat, but secures the baby as best as she can before driving off in the direction of Vienna.

 

It takes her four days to track down Yelena, after two days making her way to America. Los Angeles is exactly the sort of place that Natalia thought she would find her friend, which means it’s the last place she looks.

“What do you want?” Yelena asks. She lives in a large house in a nice neighborhood, surrounded by suburbia: just the sort of place for a mother and child, but completely wrong for a (hopefully) ex-assassin.

“My baby,” Natalia says. “You have to keep her safe. Please, Yelena.”

Yelena stares down at the bundle in Natalia’s arms for what might as well have been an eternity before slowly lifting her from her mother’s arms. “What’s her name?” she asks.

Natalia digs through her pocket for the map of Los Angeles that she had picked up on her way there. On the back, she has written the words she wants her daughter to remember. _Love, Natalia, James. Любовь Наталия Джемс._ She passes the paper to Yelena, then turns her back and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter ended up a liiiiittle cheesy and probably also a bit scattered...
> 
> Next chapter takes place during CA:CW, and is again from Lyuba's POV.


	3. Chapter 3

Papa pushes Lyuba toward the crowd the moment he sees the newspaper and heads toward their apartment, purposeful and dangerous. Lyuba can take the hint, and ducks into the hoards of people, heading toward Gabriela’s home, except she stops at the end of the block, her eyes drawn back toward the apartment building. She can’t help but wait to see the disaster unfold, something unfortunately human within her unable to do anything but watch.

German police close in on the building, but they aren’t the only players on the field; Lyuba can see the figure of a man on top of the building, too, and another man approaching from the other direction. Just two minutes later does Lyuba catch a glimpse of her father, leaping across to the building beside theirs, only to be pursued by the second figure from the roof. It hits Lyuba how serious this is as Papa is tackled down, as he stands again and runs. The German police file out of the building before Lyuba has made up her mind what to do, following Papa as he runs down the street, in plain view of all the vendors who are now watching and growing suspicious.

Lyuba tries to rationalise. She needs three things: she needs to find her mother, she needs the ability to get to her mother, and she needs someplace safe to regroup if finding her mother doesn’t pan out.

The second thing is the easiest to knock off the list because she has a backpack hidden under the floorboards in the apartment, meant for a scenario just like this. She weaves her way past the onlookers and toward the back door in the alleyway, then all but runs up the stairs until she reaches their apartment.

The place is a disaster zone. Papa’s mattress is flipped over, the things that had been on the shelves are shattered on the ground, and the door has splintered from where the police broke it down. There’s a hole in the floorboards where Papa had grabbed a bag, and Lyuba kneels next to it and draws the second backpack into her lap. It’s just the essentials and a few things that can’t be replaced ― just a card with phone numbers on it, money, a blanket, and some granola bars, because the rest of it is in Papa’s backpack. Lyuba slings the straps over her shoulders and digs through the drawer of her clothes, pulling out another shirt and some underwear, bundling them in a coat, shoving them into the bag, and then leaves as quickly as she can.

The train station is her next destination. Too young to drive, the fastest way to get anywhere she needs to go is by train. Either way, Lyuba needs to make a call first, so she sits down on a bench to find the card with the phone numbers. Except...

“Oh, damn,” Lyuba says.

She stares into the bag in her lap. There are three notebooks, two IDs (one for her and one for Papa), the clothes she’d stuffed into it on her way out of the apartment, and documents to back up the histories of the new identities.

This is Papa’s bag.

Oh, _goddamnit_.

Lyuba reevaluates. She cannot call anyone for help, because the card with the numbers is in her backpack, which is with Papa. There’s no guarantee that anyone will find her if she stays put, either, because she and Papa hid their tracks well when they came to Bucharest. Mama might know the city, but wouldn’t have much of an idea beyond that. The most advantageous path that Lyuba can see consists of trying to work out Papa’s next move, but then that’s unreliable at best. And anyway, she has no clue where even to start.

She tries to think of a place special or important to Papa, and then rules those out because that’s exactly how people find you, and both she and Papa know that. She’ll have to take the chance that Papa won’t just pick a city from a map, so that leaves places that are negative to Papa.

He doesn’t talk about those places. Nonetheless, Lyuba knows basics: his downfall and resurrection were in Russia, which narrows her search area from 21 million square miles to only about 6 or 7 million. He’ll choose somewhere with some sort of structure, which rules out fields and similar. And along the line of buildings... Papa would be most familiar with the areas around HYDRA bases where they’d stationed him. So, to find those bases...

Lyuba digs through the bag and unearths the notebooks. She can’t bear to read much more than the first page of the first notebook she picks up, but scans through the pages looking for place names anyway. There are a number of them, all across the world, but Siberia jumps out at her. It’s not as if Siberia is a small region, but it's smaller than Russia, at least, and she’s halfway through the third notebook when she sees the name Predporozhnyy and backtracks. _...Sent on a short trip to nearby Predporozhnyy..._ it details.

Lyuba treks back to the library where once she had gotten Papa notes on how to remember. Google Maps’ satellite view of Predporozhnyy shows the place itself, and, tucked up in the mountains, a blob of black against the white of snow. That blob, Lyuba has a feeling, is the place she’ll have to go.

 

It takes her almost a week to make it to Predporozhnyy, at which point she bundles up and marches off past the fringes of the town and spends another day walking until the building comes into view. At a jog, though it’s not much faster than walking what with all the snow, Lyuba approaches, wary of the plane type thing that is just nearby.

The doors are steel and Lyuba is unable to open them, so she turns her eye toward the plane thing, which has been left with its bay door open, possible for a quick exit should it be needed. Carefully, Lyuba steps up into the hull, cataloging everything she notices. There are two seats with the seatbelts awry, which indicates at least two passengers. One gun is missing from the set, which means that they’re armed. Lyuba reaches for a pistol, the kind Yelena taught her to use, and stands in wait for them to return. Whoever is here, whomever this plane belongs to, they will know something, even if they’re remaining HYDRA agents.

It’s a solid hour before there’s movement. Two men, one carrying the other’s weight, trudge through the snow toward the plane. Lyuba strengthens her stance. One is dressed in blue, the other in black, and both are weary. Even then, Lyuba probably can’t win if they try to kill her. She readies herself. The gun in her hands is her advantage. Hidden by the doorway of the entrance, Lyuba waits. The man in blue is the first to enter her view. She raises the gun toward his head.

“Where is the Winter Soldier?” she demands.

The man leans his companion against the wall, out of Lyuba’s sight. Lyuba repeats herself in Russian and in Romanian before going back to English.

“Who’s asking?” the man asks, American with no otherwise discernible accent.

“You don’t need to know that,” Lyuba says, fighting to keep her voice steady, although she thinks it might be rather shrill.

“Lyuba,” rasps his companion.

Lyuba jolts forward to peer around the corner, and meets Papa’s eyes. “Buck,” the man in blue says. “You know this kid?”

Papa looks up at Lyuba and nods. “My kid,” Papa says.

The man in blue is gobsmacked. “Your kid,” he repeats. He turns back to Lyuba, studies her face. “She’s like sixteen, Buck. How?”

“I’m fourteen, sir,” Lyuba says. “And he had very little to do with any of the... process.” Lyuba doesn’t like to think about it much, but it’s probably true. Papa was the Winter Soldier. Everything he did was (most likely) supervised. If it _had_ been his choice, Lyuba wouldn’t have survived long enough to be born.

The man in blue obviously hadn’t thought about that previously. He makes a face like she’s shoved a wedge of lime into his mouth.

“I, uh...” The man in blue draws himself up a bit, like he’s preparing himself for what’s to come. “My name is Steve Rogers.”

Lyuba has seen pictures of Captain America before, but the man himself is different. He does not exude confidence in this moment. Lyuba can imagine him as a smaller man, determined to be healthier than he is, but she doesn’t see how that translates to this. This man is weary and beaten down by losses.

“Captain America,” Lyuba says drily.

Steve Rogers shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

Lyuba tips her head to the side, but otherwise doesn’t question this. “Where are you going to go?” she asks instead.

Rogers seems stumped. “Steve,” Papa says.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got company.”

Rogers turns to look out the bay door. Standing in the snow outside is a man in a kevlar-ish unitard, carrying in one hand a helmet and dragging with the other a man who is infinitely less calm. “King T’Challa,” Rogers greets. His tone is defensive, but T’Challa doesn’t seem to have any intention of anything less than peaceful talk.

“I would like to invite you to Wakanda. I can provide medical aid to Sergeant Barnes, and will be taking Zemo to the United Nations for trial.”

Rogers considers this for a moment before nodding in consent. “Bucky,” he says, “you agree with that course of action?”

“Sure,” Papa says, not pondering it for even a second. Lyuba kneels next to him and pulls his arm around her shoulders, hefting him up to a somewhat-standing position. His left arm is mostly gone, wires exposed and the edges of the plates clumped with now-cooled, once-melted metal. Together they walk-slash-hobble toward the seats. Lyuba sets Papa down in one and then helps him with the buckles before sitting beside him, buckling herself in, and curling up against the armrest.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says. Papa looks over at her.

“Me too.” He lets that sit in the air for a while, but then the reprimand comes. “What were you thinking?” he asks. He doesn’t sound angry, which might have puzzled Lyuba except that Papa has never been outright angry with her. He is too tired and beat up to start now.

“You had my backpack,” Lyuba says. “And we both know it would be easier to track you down, since I knew where you’d started, than it would Mama, who’s been elsewhere for two years.”

Papa concedes to this. “I’m still not happy about this,” he says, “but I am glad that you found me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The spacing got a little weird on this chapter, I'm sorry. Hopefully it's still okay.


	4. Chapter 4

The Soldat has been awoken to train girls—adults, but barely—in murder.

It has been long enough since the last wipe that the Soldat has the faint impression that this is wrong, but the orders are all-consuming and the Soldat cannot devote attention to this. He is steered into a long hall where the twelve little girls stand in two straight lines. There is one redhead among them, shorter than most of the rest, and his eyes are drawn to her. He estimates her to be roughly nineteen years old, and despite being smaller than the others is perhaps a year or two older than the majority.

She will be the one to survive this, the Soldat is certain.

They give her name to him as Agafya this first day, but it is clear that this is not actually her name. The next day, when she is Yevgeniya, he designates her as Madeline because the name brings to mind a little redhead and brings him to the vague memory of humor and joy. The third day, as Sofia, she is the first of the girls to bring him down. The fourth, Katya is one of six instead of one of twelve. After one week, there are three, and the Soldat is sent with them on a training mission in Yekaterinburg.

They set the four of them loose in a snowy field three kilometers from the outskirts of the city. Yelena, Zoya, and Natalia, today, begin the trek with the Soldat following behind them. Somewhere in the city are Red Room operatives, searching for the four of them, and the Soldat’s goal is to keep them all from being found.

He trails into what he can best describe as a consignment store and lazily gathers up a new set of clothing as he watches the girls disguise themselves out of the corner of his eye. Yelena ducks into a bathroom and comes out a brunette, while Zoya opts for hiding under a hat. Natalia does both, and powders her neck and face with a darker color than would match her skin. They leave separately, Yelena first, and Natalia last. He opts for trailing Natalia because of a fascination he can’t explain, but sees both of the others out of the corner of his eye every once in a while.

They duck into a crowd, the Soldat keeping a few people between Natalia and himself. His eyes scan the horizons absently, watching for their hunters, until, near noon, he spies one of them, the woman’s eyes trained on Natalia.

“Madeline!” he calls, brash and very American. He darts forward and loops an arm around Natalia’s shoulders. “There you are! Did you see that bookshop? They had a bilingual copy of Doctor Zhivago.” The Soldat steers Natalia deeper into the crowd, losing the woman who had been tailing them, who hopefully would decide that Natalia wasn’t who she was looking for.

“What are you doing?” Natalia hisses at him. “You’ve just drawn more attention to me!” She frowns at him, obviously expecting an answer.

He frowns back at her. “They’re not looking for pairs, and they’re not looking for Americans. I helped you.”

“Why, then? Your job is to make sure that we die.”

“I train you. I don’t kill you,” the Soldat says. “So you’ll just have to bear with me ‘til the end of the... line.”

These must be code words to trigger some sort of shock, because the Soldat is now standing next to a door on the second story of a rickety brick building. Natalia, small and redheaded, begins to look small and blond. He imagines blue and falling and his ears ring with a cry: “Buh’eeeee!”

“Soldat!” Natalia barks, and he is back in the square in Yekaterinburg, staring down at her, his left hand clenched around her wrist. The hinges creak as he forces himself to let go. Without the anchor, his hand shakes. He can pretend that it’s just his hand, except the left one is stiff enough that it doesn’t tremble without outside help.

“You’re shaking,” Natalia points out. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he says. Natalia obviously sees through the lie.

“Pizdish’,” she mutters, staring at him so as to see when he cracks. After a beat of staring at each other, Natalia turns on her heel and drags him by the hand toward a bakery. Sitting down at a table, she begins her interrogation. “Who are you?”

“Soldat,” he replies. “I am the Winter Soldier.”

“And before that? Who are you, soldier?”

“Sergeant James Barnes three two fi-” he says, and Natalia studies him sharply.

“You’re American,” she remarks blandly. “East coast, probably. Ring any bells?” she asks, the English language expression emphasized by a raise of her brow.

“No,” he says, transitioning back to Russian. “And? Are you going to report me?”

Natalia contemplates his question for a few long seconds. “Not if I survive,” she says paradoxically.

He smiles at her. “And if you don’t?”

“I’ll be waiting,” she says, and it isn’t really an answer, but the Soldat laughs as well as he is able. Natalia leans back in her chair and joins in. The pair of them are chattering like dolphins more than laughing, but it feels like laughter, so the Soldat pays this no mind.

They leave the bakery after their bout of laughter and leisurely make their way through another square. They are outside of a hotel when Natalia takes his arm and pivots him to face her, pulling him down into a kiss.

He does not remember kisses, but he has the impression that this one is chaste for all that it doesn’t look it. Natalia’s arms are looped around his neck, her head tilted as she presses her lips to his for longer than the Soldat thinks is proper, at least for this type of kiss.

It feels like a long time before she pulls away, but it does not drag on, and is even a bit pleasant. The Soldat does not have much experience with pleasant things, but this is... good. He wishes he had a better grasp of the feeling.

Natalia rises up on her toes to peer over his shoulder. “They’re gone,” she says, and then she kisses him again. This time it is shorter, but no less pleasant--if anything, the Soldat is better prepared for it and can enjoy it more than the previous.

The Soldat does not think about emotions very often. He does not have to; he rarely has time for emoting, let alone examining the feelings he has. Something swells up in his chest and he thinks, love. A new voice in the back of his mind speaks up.

You always did fall hard and fast, it says. The Soldat thinks of blond hair and blue eyes, although voices don’t have hair or eyes.

“What do you feel?” the Soldat asks Natalia. “When we do this.” He presses his lips to hers again.

Natalia draws away and then kisses him again. “Here,” she says, pressing a hand to her sternum. “Like a balloon. My heart is racing,” she adds.

“That’s love,” the Soldat says. It’s hardly something he’s an expert on, but he feels this with certainty.

Natalia looks up at him. “Is it?” she asks. “I thought love was only meant for children.”

“Love is for anybody.”

“But not everybody.”

“It could be.”

“No one could ever know of all people so as to love them.”

“But you could love the idea of people,” the Soldat says. He knows this. He loves someone who’s no more than an idea, and he can’t know much more of Natalia than the determination that defines her. 

“Are people just ideas, then?” Natalia ponders, turning to loop her arm through his and tuck her hand into his coat pocket. “What makes a person?”

“I don’t know.”

They walk through the street in silence. The Soldat thinks about the people they pass by. They have bodies and minds, but further wondering brings him to the thought that he can’t really know that for sure unless he interacts with them. He thinks this is somewhat Cartesian, but can’t remember if the word is Cartesian or Carterian. The name Carter sounds more familiar than Cartes, but then again, he doesn’t exactly have the best grasp on his memories. Also, this is too philosophical to have been taught by his puppeteers, which indicates that he’s malfunctioning, further evidenced by the previous memory (Buh’eeeee!).

He spends the afternoon touring Yekaterinburg with Natalia, watching the sun as it sets. When the clock hits nine thirty, he points Natalia back toward the street where the truck waits for them, then takes a different route.

He arrives in time to see them haul Zoya’s body into the back of the truck. The spatter of blood on the snow betrays the spot where she died. The Soldat forces himself not to look at it, choosing a spot on the side of the truck to stare at instead. His eyes stray to Natalia periodically, but he lets them look over the guards as well to keep away the suspicion of anyone watching him. Natalia stares straight ahead, her face as blank as can be.

He looks at Zoya’s body again. It occurs to him that Yelena is not in the truck. Presumably, this is because she has run away—had she been killed, they would have collected her body as well. Against all common sense, he hopes that she will be alright.

They return to the compound and are led to the operating room. It’s small and cramped, crowded by the chair, a rail set into the wall, and a metal operating table. He is immediately cuffed to the rail, and Natalia is led to the operating table. The doctors instruct her to strip and change into the paper gown to her left, and the Soldat casts his focus away from her. They make her wipe off her face, the makeup staining the wet cloth. Then they force her to lie back, restraining her to the table, and approach with needles and vials of brilliant blue liquid. Natalia would look unphased, but the Soldat can hear her breathing pick up, and once he knows she’s scared, he can see it in her eyes.

The doctors give Natalia three injections, then leave the room. The light that follows burns even after the Soldat has closed his eyes, as though he is standing too close to the sun. Natalia screams.

Perhaps two minutes pass. Perhaps it’s an hour. When they finally stop the light, the Soldat opens his eyes to see Natalia has torn free of the restraints. There is sweat on her brow and new muscle on her limbs. The matron gives Natalia a pair of shorts and a shirt to wear, and once Natalia is properly clothed, they release the Soldat from the heavy shackles keeping him against the wall.

Back in the dark training hall, the matron sets a hand on Natalia’s shoulder. “You will win,” she says in a soothing manner. “And so long as you don’t kill our asset, you will live.”

Natalia’s eyes are wide as she approaches. The Soldat takes a step back into a better stance, lowering his center of gravity, and waits for her to reach him. He pivots slowly as she circles him, and lets the first punch make contact. The second punch is his, and hits Natalia’s gut, but she is prepared for it and takes it well. They fight in earnest then, and the Soldat snags Natalia’s throat. Natalia kicks back at him, and builds the momentum to swing herself up onto his shoulders. From there, she uses her own body weight to yank him down to the ground. His back hits with a clunk, and Natalia pins his arms in place with her legs as she strangles him. With her new strength, it is nearly impossible for him to fight back. He taps out and the matron barks, “Natalia! Let the Soldat go.”

Natalia releases him and stands. The Soldat rises to his feet as well. There’s no lesson here, so he leaves the fighting in the past. Natalia has passed her test. It is the Black Widow and the matron who lead him back to the cold, and he sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a word or two of Russian in this chapter, but my skills in Russian are rudimentary and I welcome help with other languages : )


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels clumsy, probably because it took me so long to get the whole thing done. Sorry about that...

Lyuba leaves Wakanda on the same Quinjet as Captain Rogers, though it’s highly doubtful that he knows about it. They land in an airstrip in New York State, and Lyuba leaves as soon as Rogers has gone. The walk to the city is arduous, but it’s easy enough to find a bus station and buy a ticket west.

Three days of transit later finds Lyuba bored out of her mind as she makes her way through the city to the house Yelena has left abandoned. She’s looking for the supplies to make passports, and finds them in a box crammed into the mattress of Yelena’s bed. By the end of the day, she’s got a US passport for an Emily Lovell — a blonde (thanks to a wig) of eighteen years old, born and raised in San Francisco — and a plane ticket from LAX to JFK. The flight itself is just shy of six hours long, and so in less than a day, Lyuba is right back where she started.

She rents a room in a crappy Motel 6 in New Jersey because New York itself is supremely expensive for a fourteen year old who has no source of income and will be living off of the remaining five hundred dollars she’d managed to scrounge up.  
It’s four days before Lyuba can wheedle her way into an interview at Stark Industries. She sits outside of the office of a guy called Harold Hogan next to a number of women and a few men, all of them at least a decade older than she, and goes into the meeting when Hogan leans out of the room and calls for Ms Lovell.

“Hi!” Lyuba says, shaking his hand. “Emily.”

“Happy Hogan,” the man says. “Please, sit.”

Lyuba sits down and watches Hogan passively as he maneuvers around the desk to sit in the chair opposite her. “So, Ms Lovell,” Hogan says, opening a file with Emily’s passport photo heading the first page, “Mr Stark is notoriously difficult to work with. What makes you think that someone as young and... inexperienced as you can manage a position as his personal assistant?”

Lyuba bares her teeth in a smile. “I’m organized. I’m stubborn,” she says. “And I need a job.”

Hogan frowns at her. “And the first place you came was Stark Industries?”

Lyuba frowns back. “My dad was badly injured by a super,” she said. “Mr Stark and the Accords would make sure that it would never happen again. If I can help that become a reality, I’m going to do my best, Mr Hogan.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you have no qualifications, miss,” Hogan says. “I don’t think you’re the right person for this job.

Lyuba smiles at him. “Okay,” she says, bounding up out of her seat and turning in a half-pirouette as she leaves.

She goes down to the parking garage under the tower and finds a blind spot. Here, she pulls out an instant camera from her bag. She slips Hogan’s ID from her pocket and snaps a photo of the front and another of the back. Then she hurries back up into the office, telling the receptionist that she forgot her phone, and drops the ID on the ground a little further down the hall than Hogan’s office. With a hurried goodbye to the receptionist, Lyuba leaves the building for good.

That night, Lyuba doesn’t sleep. She sits at the desk in the corner with a computer, a little card printer stolen from a nearby high school, and her two photos, trying to size the information printed on the card just right. It’s about two in the morning when she succeeds and she sets the finished lanyard down on the nightstand before collapsing into bed.

She sleeps for nearly a day afterwards. When she wakes up again, she opens up a bottle of coffee concentrate and takes a swig. Grimacing at the taste, she pulls the computer closer to her and opens up the Stark Industries website, which is hosted on some of the SI servers. From there, Lyuba tracks down a string of numbers that’ll let her into the rest of the servers. At this point, she adds a new identity to the list of file clerks employed by SI.

Three days later, Claire Jones struts into the lobby of Stark Industries, dressed in slacks and a blouse that are altogether completely unremarkable — neither flattering nor unflattering. She scans in with her badge, grins at the receptionist, and steps into the elevator. As it rises, Lyuba studies “Claire’s” face in the reflection on the back of the doors. Without the wig, her hair is auburn, and as always her eyes are greenish blue. She looks enough like either of her parents that it’s a wonder no one has called her out for it.

The doors slide open with a chime, and Lyuba steps out into a hallway that branches out into numerous offices. There’s an empty one near the end, and she goes there first, dropping off her props: a briefcase and a stack of meaningless paperwork. Then back to the elevator she goes.

Her destination this time is sub-basement C, the archives where Stark keeps all the junk he collects. Once the doors slide open, Lyuba is faced with rows of artwork and Iron Man suits, inventions and artifacts. As far as she can tell, the most recent stuff is fattest from the elevator, so she passes by paintings and tech as old as her father and scans later shelves for her target: a red book emblazoned with a black star. A few times she sees rows of files, titled with long strings of numbers and letters. They pique her interest, but she forces herself to move on. The book is more important.

The book is the key to Papa’s freedom from HYDRA, once and for all.

She actually passes it the first time, before doubling back. It’s tucked under a lump of metal, which she soon recognizes as Papa’s prosthetic arm, marked by the infamous red star. She clenches her jaw as she lifts it up carefully — it’s heavier than she can quite manage with ease — and extracts the book from beneath it. In its place, she slips an empty copy of the book, then she starts back toward the office she had commandeered.

Except she’s not alone in the elevator. When the doors open at sub-basement B, Lyuba tucks the book into her jacket, trying to hide the lump with her arm.

It’s a man who enters. He’s probably going on fifty and his dark curls are greying as a result. He’s not very tall, and carries himself as if to make his body seem even smaller. She vaguely recognizes him. Papa’s a huge nerd who collects research papers and science magazines, and she’s seen this guy’s picture in them before. His name is Banner.

“Uh, hi,” he says. He steps into the elevator like she’s going to attack him or something. Nervous. Lyuba stands her ground. She’s half afraid that if she moves, she’ll drop the book or something. That half is too prominent to ignore.

“Hi,” she says.

“What were you doing in C?” he asks. Lyuba shrugs as her mind struggles with what to say.

“Dropping off some paperwork,” she says, then hides a wince. It’s a horrible lie. There’s nothing true about it at all, which means it’ll take pretty much zero effort to puzzle out.

“Huh. Where do you work again? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before, but you look kind of familiar.”

“I’m a file clerk up on forty three. I just started a few days ago.” She laughs a little. “It’s not quite the dream job for me, but I’m getting to where I want to be, slowly but surely.”

“That’s not it then. Maybe a relative of yours?”

Shit shit shit. “Probably not. They’re all in Iowa.”

“Which part? I’ve been once or twice.”

Holy God.

“Springfield,” she says, praying that there isn’t actually a Springfield in Iowa, or at the very least that Banner hasn’t been there. If he recognizes her as being related to either of her parents, she’s pretty much screwed. She cannot let him call her out on her bluff.

“Huh,” Banner says. “Never been. Must be a coincidence.” He glances up at the floor number above the doors. “This is my floor,” he explains. As he steps out, he calls over his shoulder, “See you around!”

Lyuba breathes out a sigh of relief once she is alone in the elevator again. Leaning back against the railing, she closes her eyes for a second before opening them. The elevator climbs steadily without stopping for any more passengers and in a few minutes, Lyuba is back in the little office. She slips the book into the briefcase, then sits down at the desk.

It takes nearly an hour to delete everything about the book, and she has to stop and fiddle with the stack of papers a few times as people gather around the water cooler across the hall. Near five pm, she gathers everything up, wipes away fingerprints to the best of her ability, then takes the elevator down to the lobby with a cluster of SI employees.

She passes through the lobby without any trouble, then catches a bus out of the city. Another long walk from the bus stop brings her to the Quinjet. She stows away in one of the smaller rooms, curls up, and goes to sleep.

Rogers returns two days later. Lyuba is sitting on the edge of the ramp when he does.

“Hey, Captain,” she says.

“What’re you doing here?” Rogers asks. He sounds worn down. Lyuba grins at him manically.

“I need a ride back to Wakanda.”

“I thought you were already in Wakanda,” Rogers says, exasperated.

“Was I?” Lyuba tilts her head. “Nah, I think I was here.”

“Just... fine. Come on, then.” Rogers strides forward up the ramp, and Lyuba trails after him, plopping down in the copilot’s seat and buckling herself in with a click as the Quinjet lifts into the air and starts on its way to Wakanda.

They’re somewhere over the Atlantic when Rogers starts asking questions.

“Why were you in the States?” he asks.

“There was something I needed to get,” Lyuba replies.

Rogers looks over at her, then frowns. “I don’t think I ever caught your name,” he says.

“Lyuba,” Lyuba says. “Lyubov James.”

Rogers nods, thoughtful. “James is your mother’s last name?”

“No,” Lyuba says.

“Huh.” Rogers falls silent. “What is your mother’s name?”

Lyuba thinks about this. It’s likely that Rogers knows who Mama is, having been working together on the same team for a few years, but it’s also a complicated issue, her parentage, what with the Red Room meddling and all. Sometimes, Lyuba wishes she didn’t exist, because her very being is a violation of both of her parents’ human rights. She doesn’t want Rogers caught up in it. She doesn’t want his opinions or his outrage or his sympathy. So she lies. “Natalie,” she says. “I don’t know her last name. I wasn’t raised by her.”

It’s not quite a lie, and when Rogers turns to look out over the ocean instead of at her, Lyuba unbuckles herself from the seat and slips away to the back of the Quinjet and tries not to cry out of homesickness and out of longing for her mother or her father or Yelena who is like a mother to her. She doesn’t want to talk to Rogers ever again. There’s no particular reason, he’s just got the type of moral compass that doesn’t point to Lyuba, and it’s off putting. It gives her anxiety just thinking about his righteousness, and what he might do if he got the full story. It might be the stress of the last few days, or it might not, but panic quickly envelopes her, blacking out her vision and constricting her chest.

When she falls asleep a few hours later, Rogers is crouched next to her, rubbing her back as she quakes from long gone sobs.


End file.
